We all know why @realDonaldTrump makes creepy physical threats about me, right? He’s scared. He’s trying to do what he always does to women who scare him: call us names, attack us personally, shrink us down to feel better about himself. It may soothe his ego – but it won’t work. pic.twitter.com/2rfPSlvlQA

Now that Ralph Nader is endorsing Michael fucking Bloomberg as someone Democrats should nominate in 2020, can we all agree that he's been trash for decades?

I understand people thought he was a big lefty and that's why he ran in 2000, but aside from a couple of issues, it was really more just that he hates Democrats. Which is why endorsing a centrist who spent a lot of time as an independent makes sense for him.

Speaking of family stories, @realDonaldTrump has one, too. It's the story of a second-generation tax cheat who was handed a $413 million inheritance through rich-guy loopholes and outright criminal fraud.

And even now, before announcing, she's playing the game on Trump's terms. A lot can happen between now and November 2020, of course, but the Dems nominating Warren could well be the path of least resistance to a Trump reelection (although Sock is surely right that Warren would make a much better running mate choice than Clinton did).

It looks like the GOP is going to pick up at least one seat in the U.S. Senate this year. Warren is needed in the Senate more than ever.

__________________"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis

A guy on my block is running as Democrat for congress. He's a second generation Korean. He has gazillions of signs all over the district. I haven't seen a single yard sign for the incumbent republican, McArthur. Does that mean anything? idk
I hope he wins. I'm sick of McArthr's emails bleating and mewling about bipartisanship. I'd like to know what he thinks about all the untruth and insanity issuing forth from Dear Leader.

__________________Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant

If 538 has any credibility left, your neighbor is running a hell of a campaign. A big push from now until election day might just flip that seat, which a big deal since wresting control of the U.S. House of Representatives is likely the last chance to even slow down the crazy train.

__________________"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis

If 538 has any credibility left, your neighbor is running a hell of a campaign. A big push from now until election day might just flip that seat, which a big deal since wresting control of the U.S. House of Representatives is likely the last chance to even slow down the crazy train.

Siena/NYT did a live poll that started on Sept 22, and it was added to the average on Sept 24.

They actually had a ridiculously good result initially, showing Kim ahead by over 20 pts. But eventually as they did more calls and finished out the poll, they ended with a merely really good result (Kim +10).

This caused such a huge change because most of the previous polls showed a much closer race AND most of them were partisan-affiliated polls, which get less weight. And most of them were a lot older. The weight put on polls relative to other factors increases significantly as you get into the final couple months of the race, and the confidence intervals narrow as well because instead of having only the error associated with the polling itself, it's possible or even likely the race will change when you have months left. (That is, the poll may be an accurate snapshot of how people feel at that time, but people's feelings will change.)

There are a couple reasons the Siena poll could've shown such a large shift from previous polls. One is that people start paying a lot more attention after Labor Day, and so some people who might've said "eh, I'll vote for whoever's in there" in June, by September have realized "Oh, I don't like what MacArthur's been up to*, so I'll vote for the other guy actually".

The other is that the MacArthur campaign was sending around a flyer calling Kim fishy with a picture of fish that evoke an Asian market the week before. It almost would've been subtle enough to deny it was racist, except they paired it with a blatant "Oriental" font. That probably would work in a lot of places, but New Jersey is maybe not the best place to run with that?

A short term effect caused by the racist flyers would be consistent with the next two polls showing a close race though. Otherwise I'm gonna go with "people were just tuning into the election" and that's why Siena got such a good result for Kim, particularly if more polling shows a significant lead for Kim.

Anyway, aside from winning the seat (it's possible that Democrats will win 8 or more of the 23 seats they need to flip the House just in New Jersey and Pennsylvania) being good just for the one seat...

*MacArthur is the asshole who wrote the amendment to the GOP health care bill that gutted protections for pre-existing conditions, which because the GOP is so fucking awful actually revived their ACA repeal push. So that would make his defeat particularly sweet. Fuck MacArthur and call out his claims of bipartisanship for the bullshit they are. There's a reason he resigned his chairmanship of the "centrist" GOP Tuesday Group caucus after writing that amendment because even they couldn't buy his bullshit anymore.

I'm hoping it's his most fervent devotees and the initial enthusiasm will soon be exhausted, but prepared to accept that the hope is nothing more than wishful thinking. This election, last election, same shit, different year. Did anyone really need any more convincing last time that it was needed to go vote?

__________________Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant

2. You can't read early vote data without reference to the typical patterns in that state. In some states, Democrats or Republicans tend to vote by mail/in-person early/Election Day at different rates, which means that early vote can have very different composition from Election Day vote, and thus the overall vote.

For example, in some states, black voters often turn out for the early vote in "souls to the polls" events, where they may have buses that take parishioners from churches to the early voting location on the Sundays before the election. But not all states have early voting on Sundays (the NCGOP ended it specifically because of its use by black voters). And not all states have enough black voters for this affect turnout patterns by party. You can see how this would affect Dem vs. Rep early vote turnout differently in Georgia (30% black) vs. Iowa (3%).

Missing from that report: any mention of early vote patterns in those states in 2016 or 2014. Which is what you would you need to place those numbers into context.

They do mention that Republicans tend to do better in mail-in absentee voting, while Democrats do better with in-person early voting... And they mention that early voting has only just started. But they don't put that into context of how you would expect the numbers to evolve as early voting continues.

In other words, they didn't do anything you would need to understand whether this is good news or bad news for Democrats.

3. Early vote party registration doesn't tell you how people are voting, and in particular independents are a black box on this. Turnout among independents can vary between Dem leaners and GOP leaners and you won't have any indication.

Consider an example from earlier this year, the special election in Arizona's 8th district. Registered Republicans turned out at a higher rate than their registration advantage in the district. 49% of the early vote was registered Republican and a measly 28% was registered Democrats.

Trump won the district by 21 pts, and Trent Franks, the disgraced former holder of the seat, won by 37 pts in 2016.

Wow, that looks really bad for Democrats! That would be a natural reaction. That is how a lot of people interpreted it in the leadup to the election, despite the polls indicating that it should be close.

Debbie Lesko, the Republican, only won the early vote by a <6 pt margin, and won the overall vote by <5 pts. That was a dismal performance for a Republican in that district, 16 pts worse than Trump did and 32 pts worse than the previous Republican.

But a naive reading of the early vote would've told you that Lesko was heading for a landslide victory.

4. Even reading into the early vote for an idea of what overall turnout will be is a bad idea. One, there has been a trend towards more use of early voting relative to voting on Election Day. So higher early vote numbers than previous years doesn't necessarily mean higher overall turnout. It might also reflect campaign tactics - campaigns may have convinced high likelihood voters to vote early instead of on Election Day. That doesn't change overall turnout, it just changes whether people voted early or on Election Day. Second, policies for early voting can change from year to year. NC ending early voting on Sundays and reducing the number of days is one example, but polling places, hours, number of days, etc. can all change. You can't properly read the data without taking that into account, and that means keeping on top of changes in policies in all of the states you're looking at.

5. As such, reading too much into the early vote data is a bad idea that's most likely to either mislead you or just confirm your priors. If you tend to think Democrats are fucking up, you'll find reasons to think that's what happening. Meanwhile, people, including me, read too much into the high turnout for early voting in Florida in 2016, thinking it was showing good news for Clinton. So I've learned my lesson there too.

There are exceptions, however - in some states, the early vote comprises the majority of the vote. At that point, early vote is a much better indicator of overall turnout. And there are election analysts who understand specific states very well and are better at sorting out these issues.

But basically, that report needs to be taken with a giant grain of salt. The polling people I follow on Twitter have been saying to ignore reports like this aside from certain state-specific analysts (Jon Ralston in NV, for example).

The slightly longer version would be: Polls that are released at this point are already taking into account early voting, since they ask people how likely they are to vote (and "I already voted" is a possible response). But polls will also capture people who are going to vote but haven't yet, which means they're covering the whole electorate instead of just a portion of it. So just look at the polling averages.